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Monday, November 14, 2016

Sector Imperialis Easy Urban Basing Tutorial

In this basing tutorial article, I'm going to go over how to whip out nice looking bases SUPER quick using the brand new Games Workshop Sector Imperialis plastic urban bases.

I'm going to go through two tutorials: an Easy Formula for straight up Sector Imperialis urban bases, and a Fancy Tutorial for people who want a little weathering/rusting on the bases.

The two basing tutorials are mutually exclusive, and, though the Fancy formula contains the Easy one, it has extra prep that comes before the Easy formula. So if you want Fancy, please skip down to that.

MR. PINK'S BLATHERING (feel free to skip down to the tutorial)

So, like I mentioned in my post about my first forays into a Genestealer Cult, my brother is one of my greatest hobby cheerleaders. It is thanks to him and his cajoling/bribing that I got my engines restarted on the Silent Hill Amnion Talos commission, and it was his challenge to get 10 Genestealer Cult miniatures painted that got me going on the cult.

Since he's of my blood and has been with me through my whole hobby journey, he knows that I really enjoy getting bogged down in sculpting and converting, and that painting is my least-favourite part of the GW hobby. He knew that, given the option, I would spend MONTHS puttering away with converting the genestealer cult troops, so he challenged me to paint 10 of them, straight out of the box, before I convert anything. That plan definitely worked. And, now that I've actually painted them, and like the scheme, I'm more motivated to paint more of them!But what does this have to do with basing? Just as I'm likely to spend a pile of time converting and sculpting, I can get caught up using a lot of time in making bases from scratch. To carry my momentum from painting the cult troops straight out of the box, I wanted to buy pre-made bases to get them done as quickly as the models meant to be on them. The Games Workshop Sector Imperialis bases showed up right on time!

EASY FORMULA URBAN BASING TUTORIAL:

The wonder of the Sector Imperialis bases is that all the detail you need is right there, cast into these plastic bases. If you're looking to get some good bases out, which might impress someone at a tournament, but might not win a Golden Demon, this formula is for you. It's basically airbrushing + drybrushing + washing, then you're done.

Some different washes in the colour palette you favour (for me, I used GW Ogryn Flesh, Gryphone Sepia, Devlan Mud, and Asurmen Blue, as well as some Vallejo Blue Ink)

A drybrush

A basecoat brush

And here is the process:

Optional: Mount your bases on a study piece of cardboard, or a long, skinny piece of wood. I mounted mine using bluetac:

Spray prime / airbrush your bases black, making sure to cover all the grey plastic on the bases. This gives you the nice black border that we've all come to expect from the GW bases we've been using for YEARS.

Let the black spray primer fully dry. Give it at least an hour.

Next, using your airbrush or a can of white/light grey spray primer, give the bases a light coat of white/grey from above. This is basically a dusting meant to settle on the high details on the bases, leaving black in the recesses. Also, try to focus on the middle of each base, to leave the edges darker. This gives the impression that the light source on the base is in the middle, and the edges are in shadow. Should look kind of like this (though I did this one backwards :P ):

Let the lighter colour dry. Again, give it at least an hour.

Using your white acrylic paint of choice, apply a drybrush coat to the bases. This will highlight all the edges on the cast detail.

Go to town with washes in your desired colour.

This is where you can apply your own style/colour palette to your bases.

For my bases, anywhere that looked like concrete or flooring/plating, I went for a mostly blue scheme. When you wash white/light grey with Asurmen, the final effect is a blue-ish grey, which is very similar to concrete to my eyes, or a light-painted steel under blue/flourescent light. I then darkened some areas using Vallejo's Blue Ink.

If I wanted really simple bases and was in a hurry, this would have been fine.

However, I wanted to add a little more contrast and colour depth to them, so I picked parts of bases and added in some earthy colours using combinations of Devlan Mud, Gryphone Sepia, and Ogryn Flesh. These are the older names for the washes, but they're basically: Blackish-brown, yellowish-brown, and reddish-brown.

When it came to the urban bases that looked more like unmodified earth, I cut the blue out and just played with the combination of browns.

There's no perfect way to apply them, and I mostly just played with them to see how they looked. I also applied them alongside each other while wet to get some blending. On the bases that were all earth (no concrete, or floor plates), I used Devlan Mud (blackish brown) around the edges, then Ogryn Flesh (reddish brown) further in, and Gryphone Sepia (yellowish brown) in the centre to make it seem like the bases were brighter in the middle than at the edges.

Here is a look at the finished effect I achieved at this point.

SLIGHTY FANCY URBAN BASING TUTORIAL:

The wonder of the Sector Imperialis bases is that all the detail you need is right there, cast into these plastic bases. If you're looking to get some good bases out, which might impress someone at a tournament, but might not win a Golden Demon, this formula is for you. It's basically airbrushing + drybrushing + washing, then you're done.

Spray prime / airbrush your bases black, making sure to cover all the grey plastic on the bases. This gives you the nice black border that we've all come to expect from the GW bases we've been using for YEARS.

Let the black spray primer fully dry. Give it at least an hour.

Next, using your airbrush or a can of white/light grey spray primer, give the bases a light coat of white/grey from above. This is basically a dusting meant to settle on the high details on the bases, leaving black in the recesses. Also, try to focus on the middle of each base, to leave the edges darker. This gives the impression that the light source on the base is in the middle, and the edges are in shadow.

Let the lighter colour dry. Again, give it at least an hour.

Using your white acrylic paint of choice, apply a drybrush coat to the bases. This will highlight all the edges on the cast detail.

Go to town with washes in your desired colour. I went into detail on my wash decisions at the end of the Easy Tutorial, so please scroll up if you'd like a look at that.

Get out the crumby brush you used to apply the mask. Remove the mask

If you're happy, feel free to leave them as is, or spot highlight the rust with light rust.

If you're happy, leave it, or spot highlight even more with a bright rust.

You're done!

...And then you can add as much metallic or whatever detail as you like, but, in a pinch, the bases above will do.

However, here's a field of my near-finished bases using this formula:

They look way fancier than they should based on how little time I've put in on them :P

It's incredible that you painted the first batch with just washes. Other than the dry time, that would make it much faster to complete. The masked rust looks nice as well, I've seen Greg put that method to good use on his Orks but I've never gone that far.

Dude. I HATE basing. This being quick and easy was KEY, so I'm happy to share the strategy with other people.

I've learned that masked rust can be a pain. Maybe I'm not doing it right, or maybe I'm applying too much paint, but I tried this on my Haemonculus Venom, and it was a nightmare getting all the masking fluid off because it didn't want to come off, and I had to use my nail and pick it off in places...which wound up flaking off the actual paint.

Simply amazing! I used your technique on a set of Sector Imperialis bases and it worked like a charm. Thank you for putting the time into writing this fantastic tutorial!

For the rust, I went a different route and it worked quite well. Once the bases were finished, I stippled on GW's Typhus Corrosion technical paint and stippled GW's Ryza Rust on top of it. I haven't had too much luck with the masking liquids.

If you mean the blue-greyish areas, it was a Games workshop dark blue wash, slightly watered down. Not sure what the name was...Drakenholf Nightshade or whatever? These parts were more like a metal decking that had been painted, but, with my genestealer cult in general I like washing their metal bits with blue.

If you mean the brass-y areas, that was one of the golds washed with Gryphone Sepia.

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This is the hobby blog of Mr Pink, with the occassional interruption by his brother, Nuffsed. We create conversions of Games Workshop models (mostly) for Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Tau and Blood Angels (again, mostly). Mr Pink also offers tutorials on how to sculpt miniatures.

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